Bald Headed Eagles Fight for Coot and Ray and I Go for a Walk

Friday November 20, 2015 Jenner CA.

As I was putting my boat in the water this morning, I could see Ray in his boat down along the side of Penny Island. I parked the car and started paddling on down that way and caught up with him near the lower end of Penny Island here where we sat for awhile shooting the bull. There was some wind, but not too bad.

We decided not to paddle down to the river’s mouth area, but instead paddled around the lower end of Penny Island and up the back channel headed up the river, taking our time.

We ran into this

Just as we cleared the island’s back channel we ran into this.

Two bald headed eagles where fighting over a coot. The eagle on the right has the coot and the eagle on the left flew off down the river.

But somehow in all that, the eagle that had the coot seemed to have lost it in the water.

We watched as this eagle jumped into the air and flew off up the river and disappeared.

We paddled on at a very slow pace. Ray says, was that an otter that just splashed near him? It popped up briefly near the shoreline and disappeared.

The wind was dying down as we paddled along headed to the Muskrat Nest area just ahead.

Looking for a place to get out

With the river’s mouth closed up and the estuary water level high, it was difficult to find a place to put our boats ashore, but we were able to squeak in here by the Muskrat Nest area.

Going for a walk up the hill

We walked up the hillside through these big ferns, headed up to the ridge top using an old animal trail that was a bit overgrown with brush. And yes, there is a lot of poison oak in the brush, but Ray and I don’t catch the stuff.

We made it up the hill and are headed over to a big rock just ahead to have a sit and a rest.

This was our view looking down the river past Buzzard rock there on the left, down to the town of Jenner.

Eventually we headed on down the hill back to our boats.

Muskrat nests

Ray was checking out these muskrat nests which were right near where our boats were. They look like big piles of brush and blend into the brush quite well.

We got back in our boats and were just starting to head back down the river when Dan paddled up. We chatted for a bit and Dan took off up the river and we crossed over the river to the other side to look for birds along the shoreline.

Predator food

There weren’t too many birds out today, maybe because the eagles are in the area. We did go by these coots which were in the same spot I saw the eagles diving on them a couple days ago.

The wind was really dying out now and the water was flat as we headed in for the day.

It was so nice out we took our time getting to the boat ramp. We took our boats out of the water and went on home for the day.

And that was it for another nice day on the water.